(35i) The Diversity of Three-Dimensional Photonic Crystals for Colloidal Self-Assembly

Many butterflies, birds, beetles, and chameleons owe their spectacular colors to the microscopic patterns within their wings, feathers, or skin. When these patterns, or photonic crystals, result in the omnidirectional reflection of commensurate wavelengths of light, it is due to a complete photonic band gap (PBG). The number of natural crystal structures known to have a PBG is relatively small. Those within the smaller subset of notoriety, including diamond and inverse opal, have proven difficult to synthesize through self-assembly. We predict a broad range of geometries capable of supporting a PBG from more than 150,000 photonic band calculations across more than 2700 crystal templates – including nearly 300 previously-unreported PBG structures. These structures are interesting for many applications spanning many length scales, and several can already be self-assembled on the colloidal length scale. With this new, enlarged set of 3D photonic crystals, we also revisit and discuss oft-used design heuristics for PBG materials.